IdeaPro.com

There’s an old maxim in publishing — the first advice a new writer gets from a publisher is “Write what you know!.”

That’s good advice, as far as it goes. However, if you want real-world people to ACT on what you write, you should get to know THEM, in addition to writing something that you know about.

If you’re writing for an audience of computer geeks, hangout where they do for a while before you write stuff you want them to act on.

1. Find out where your audience gathers for coffee, meetings, seminars, classes or conventions
2. Get into the room with these terrific people — mingle!
3. Smell them, touch them, hear them, laugh and cry with them, get angry with them, learn to feel like they do in your gut
4. Watch what they do, what they read, what they eat, what they drink, what they wear, what they like and what they hate
5. Participate in discussions with them
6. Ask questions
7. Listen to what they say
8. Hear what they complain about
9. Take notes on what you learn in real time

Take your notes from those real-world sessions and read them carefully. Summarize them for yourself, so you understand what you have learned.

Now, write a list of the ten or twenty things you think these fine folks might want to know that you do in fact know about. This will be the list that will enable you to write persuasive, informative and effective traffic-generating articles or posts that your target buyers or readers will want to read, to bookmark and to link-to on their own web-sites.

Rubbing elbows with your audience is the secret to producing persuasive copy for advertising or internet marketing. If you don’t know your audience, you may be able to write wonderful copy. But what if nobody reads it? To get people to actually READ and ACT on your copy, you need to think and act like your target buyers and readers. And, the best way to learn about them is to actually spend time with them in the real world, where you can in fact smell them and touch them.

The web may have changed MOST things, but it hasn’t changed one thing — the 5 senses. When you use all five senses — touch, smell, taste, vision, hearing … you get the idea. So get in their face!

The copy you write will sell more, produce more traffic and you’ll be a much better copy writer.

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